They're supposed to tell you when you've got a new email, when some kind soul has retweeted your crappy joke, or when your virtual strawberries are ripe for the picking.

But, we keep getting notifications that read more like thinly veiled adverts for the game in question. They're nagging little reminders that the game still exists, and needy cries for love and attention.

This Lock screen spam can be enough to get any game sent to the trash. But, wait. Hold your horses.

Thankfully, you can tweak (or completely disable) notifications in iOS on an app-by-app basis, so you can turn off those annoying bleets without having to give up the game.

Here's how.

You might have noticed that the offending apps actually ask you for your permission to show you notifications, in a pop-up like the one above.

But, in a lot of apps it doesn't actually work. In our testing, we've found that hitting 'Don't Allow' on this screen rarely protected us from notifications, and we were still hit with a lot of spam.

It's time to turn this stuff off... permanently.

First, you need to launch the 'Settings' app on your iOS device.

Once you're in, choose 'Notifications' from the list of options.

Here's a list of every app that supports push notifications. The ones at the top have been granted permission by you. The ones at the bottom of the page haven't.

Find the game that is sending you spam, and tap on its name.

Our culprit - Zynga's cartoon shooter Respawnables - is there at the top of the list.

Now, we can really tweak the type of notifications that are allowed.

Notification Center is that list of recent reminders that you can pull down to view by dragging your finger from the clock at the top of the iPhone Home screen down to the bottom. To save clearing those out, choose 'No'.

You can also set the alert style. You can choose the banners that conveniently appear at the top of the screen, or full-on pop-ups that force you to take action before they go away. Or you can just choose 'None'.

You can also kiss goodbye to those notification badges (the little red circle that appears on the corner of an app icon). Same goes for the annoying sounds that accompany every alert.

And, finally, there's the Lock screen. If this is on, games can advertise themselves when your device is not in use and clog up your notification list when you next grab your iPhone or iPad. Turn these off, too.